Question: What happens when a grant, a group of Vassar College students, faculty mentors and Hudson Valley Hospice come together?

Answer: “Healing Narratives: De-Stigmatizing Trauma and Illness through the Senses,” a two-week program at Vassar College that looks at the commonality of death and people’s ability to shape their own narratives.

The program, which runs from Sept. 8-20, was one of three summer arts projects for students per a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through Vassar College’s Creative Arts Across Disciplines Initiative, said Tom Pacio, the initiative’s interdisciplinary arts coordinator.

“One of the goals of CADD is to bring students, faculty and space on campus together, using the art of collaboration,” said Pacio, with this year’s theme focused on sound.

“Healing Narratives” includes “In Light Of,” a series of live vignettes written, choreographed and acted by the students involved in the project, per their audio interviews of hospice patients, with the performances held at the campus’ Susan Stein Shiva Theater.

The program also features an exhibition in The Collaboratory, a retrofitted trailer on campus, to showcase visuals and sound files of the hospice interviews that were edited from the performance, giving audiences a full scope of the process, while allowing for personal reflection.

“They’re not choosing to focus on the moment that these individuals learned they were sick or in transition, and they’re not memorializing them,” Pacio said of the students’ show. “They’re sharing stories of how these people became who they were.”

“The students’ open-minded approach to the subject matter, their gentle kindness with our patients and their thoughtful reflections brought joy and comfort to our patients as they shared their life stories, and has been indelibly etched in Hudson Valley Hospice’s history,” Wilson said in a released statement. “What started out as an interesting summer project has proven to be a gift to not only the students, but to our patients, their families and our staff. We look forward to continued collaboration with Vassar College.”

In all, about 17 students were involved in the project, which was devised by the performance’s three actors: Kelsey Greenway, Class of 2016, who focused on choreography; Alex Raz, ’16, poetry and screenwriting; and Aran Savory, ’16, drama; plus Joe DeGrand, ’17, sound and light. Mentors to the group were Vassar faculty Sangeeta Laura Biagi, visiting assistant professor of Italian, and Michael Joyce, professor of English.

Raz said the idea for the project came through conversations among him, Greenway, Savory, DeGrand and others that at first were about sound, the grant’s theme.

“More of it fell onto not just sound, but also the human voice and then storytelling naturally arose,” he said.

The idea that sound was one of the last senses people lose took hold with the group, leading them to work with Hudson Valley Hospice, through which they interviewed three patients and a bereavement counselor, and shared in a music therapy session.

“In my own family, we have been hearing stories (like these) all my life, but … they were only relevant to the conversation, but not, ‘What did I get from it for me?’ ” Roz said. “For sure, I think … these questions don’t have easy answers.”

The project’s faculty mentors, Biagi and Joyce, he said, helped him and the others understand the stories they heard from the hospice patients and transform them into healing through art. Still, one of the hardest parts of the project was the recent passing of one of the interviewed hospice patients.

“What this project is embarking on is how storytelling embraces life in other ways that memorialize (individuals),” Raz said. “We did it more energetically – who they are or have been.”

Pacio said one of the striking things about the project was the way the students, all of whom were in the process of shaping their lives, connected with people who’d already done so.

“Because of the success of this project, there’s an ongoing conversation to create a more permanent relationship between the college and (Hudson Valley) Hospice,” Pacio said. “For both sides of this to see the value of this work – of a student-initiated idea – it feels extraordinary and really exciting to be part of that.”

Karen Maserjian Shan is a freelance writer: mkshan@optonline.net

If you go

What: “Healing Narratives: De-Stigmatizing Trauma and Illness through the Senses,” performances and exhibition